At Last, Billy Dee Williams Is Playing Two-Face in ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’

LEGO Batman was the unexpected standout star of 2014’s The LEGO Movie, Will Arnett voicing the character with the exact right blend of weird humor and inappropriate gravitas. Fans loved him so much that he’s getting his own movie, and those who have kept up with all the filmic Batman iterations of the past will be excited to hear the latest casting news: Billy Dee Williams, who played District Attorney Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s Batman, will be voicing Two-Face in The LEGO Batman Movie.

The sequel to Burton’s Batman, Batman Forever, was supposed to bring back Williams to have him play Two-Face, but when Joel Schumacher took over those plans were scrapped and the studio went with Tommy Lee Jones instead. But Williams will at last reprise his role (sort of) for the upcoming animated film (after reprising yet another one of his characters, Lando Calrissian, for the Star Wars scene in The LEGO Movie). Director Chris McKay announced the news in the most casual way possible: when a fan threw out a hopeful question about Williams possibly voicing the villain, McKay simply responded, “He does.”

Great news for fans of Tim Burton’s Dark Knight film, and it suggests that there will be even more Easter eggs and callbacks to Batman mythology of the past in this new film. LEGO Batman is himself a caricature of Nolan’s (and, clairvoyantly, Zack Snyder’s) gritty, depressed, somewhat narcissistic Batman of the live-action movies. The Dark Knight Trilogy is a great bunch of films, but you have to admit it’s fun seeing a comedic Batman on the big screen again. Burton and Schumacher’s Batman films are, if anything, pretty silly, but they’re all the more fun for their irreverence.